General Electric Is Building The World’s Largest Wind Turbine That Will Power 15000 Homes

The Netherlands is famous for its
amazing windmills, however; even the Netherlands has never seen anything like
what GE is planning for it. According to GE, it is working on constructing the
world’s largest wind turbine just outside the city of Rotterdam. The new wind
turbine has been named Haliade-X and will be placed 850 feet high from the
turbine’s base to the blade’s top.

The Haliade-X shall produce 12
megawatts of power – that is more than enough to keep the lights on in over
15,000 homes. It is a prototype of a series that the company aims to construct
all over the world. The Haliade-X is meant to be an offshore turbine, however;
GE is building this particular prototype on land for carrying out tests. Once
the construction is complete, the engineers will spend the next five years
keeping checks on the prototype and making fine alterations to the design as
required.

Why does the Haliade-X need such
extensive testing? It is, after all, just a wind turbine. That’s a valid
question, and the answer is because the blades on this particular contraption
are gigantic. Each blade measures in at over a length of 350 feet. For
comparison’s sake; that is longer than a football field. The blades are so
gigantic that it is not possible to transport them from GE’s factory located in
North America. Therefore, the company had to construct a brand-new factory in
France for constructing them.

The construction of the Haliade-X
will kick off this year, and GE is hopeful that it will be able to obtain a
type certificate enabling it to sell the turbine commercially no later than
2021. If all goes well, you will be witnessing these huge turbines popping up
all over the North Sea and bringing clean electricity to tens of thousands of
households.